Semi-Automatic Rifle Firing Speeds Tested - Way too slow?

[Chad Harrison]

Hi all

My apologies if this has already been brought up, but a quick search did not find anything on the subject.

My favorite firearm of all time is the M1 Garand. I really looked forward to seeing this rifle in action in a 1 to 1 represention - ping and all! Sure the Germans have the MG34/42, but that's 1 or 2 per squad. Everybody has a Garand. And up close, that many Garands is a *very* deadly force. Patton was such a huge fan for a reason.

To come to the point, after playing for the last six weeks, I can say that I have seen the Garand used under just about every combat circumstance and its rate of fire, especially close, does not feel right. This kept bugging me and so I finally broke down and decided to put it to the test. I wanted to see what the rate of fire was comparing the semi-auto rifles to a bolt action one.

The test was simple enough:

1. Find regular experience unit that has only Garands. Find a unit that only has M1 Carbines. Find a unit that has only Mausers. I would have liked to find a unit that has only had Gewehr 43's so I could test it also, but alas, none exist. Also, the unit could not have hand grenades, rifle grenades, ect. - the only thing to shoot was the rifle.

2. Put the unit on a 'firing range' situation 'shooting at dirt' so I can get consistent results independent of acquiring a target, suppression, clearing a room, throwing grenades and such. Obviously in actual combat, the other factors come into play, but I have seen plenty of combat rate of fire to compare it against.

3. Note starting ammo and number of firing rifles and length of time. Made sure there was plenty of ammo so shooters would not try to conserve ammo (do they slow down if they are running low? Thompsons sure dont). Test time was 10 minutes of shooting to balance out reloading times.

4. Assign area target at a consistent ranges. For my test, I used 25, 50, 100, 150 and 200m.

After doing so, I put all my data into Excel and let Excel do all the heavy lifting - if theres one thing I learned in Engineering school its to let Excel do all the thinking!

The first thing I found is that 'Shooting at dirt' firing rates are *extremely* consistent. You let them fire about 600 rounds and four units will end within one or two bullets of each other (ex. one result from four units was 584, 585, 585 and 586). So this is obviously a very defined rate of fire and if the unit is not suppressed, theres not much else under the hood affecting this rate of fire.

The rates of fire for each weapon, at each range, for a single 'Regular' experince shooter were as follows:

KAR98 RATE OF FIRE

025m - 8.9 shots per minute

050m - 8.2 shots per minute

100m - 7.3 shots per minute

150m - 6.7 shots per minute

200m - 6.2 shots per minute

M1 CARBINE RATE OF FIRE

025m - 21.4 shots per minute

050m - 18.8 shots per minute

100m - 14.5 shots per minute

150m - 12.1 shots per minute

200m - 10.5 shots per minute

M1 GARAND RATE OF FIRE

025m - 18.3 shots per minute

050m - 16.1 shots per minute

100m - 12.8 shots per minute

150m - 11.2 shots per minute

200m - 9.8 shots per minute

Again, this is for an unsuppressed shooter - actual combat rates will vary. Putting these rates into more real terms, when your target is literally right in front of you (15m):

1. In one minute, given about 12 seconds for the entire reload process, a soldier with a Kar98 will barely have time to fire 5 rounds and reload.

2. In one minute, given about 6 seconds for the entire reload process, a soldier with a M1 Garand will fire two full 8 round clips and be 2 rounds into his 3rd clip. Or in other words, he is firing one round every 2 to 3 seconds.

3. The Garand and Carbine are using the same rate of fire under the hood. The differences you see above are from larger mag capacity of the carbine and therefore, more less reloading and therefore, more shooting.

And thats why it felt wrong. One round every 2 to 3 seconds at 15m? Im sorry, but I call foul on this one. The so called sticker on the box from John Garand advertised that the Garand with an 'trained' soldier could put out 40 to 50 shots per minute at 300 yards! A little Googling put the real rate closer to 30 shots per minute at 100 yards. In game right now, you are the difference of shooting at 200 meters and 25 meters is only 1/2. Graph that and its pretty much a linear progression. That sucker should be exponential! 200 meters is a long, aimed, steady shot - under 50 is not.

Having fired the Garand all my life, one shot every 2 or 3 seconds is cutting this weapon short. Thats *bang* one Mississippi two Mississippi three Mississ *bang* when your target is litterally right in front of you. I understand the need for target acqusition, but once that occurs, at a range of 15 yards *pop* *pop* *pop* *pop* *pop* *pop* *pop* *pop* *PING* in well under 8 seconds.

And the Carbine? Having fired that one many times, the little bugger has almost no kick at all - you can shoot faster and stay on target easier than a modern 223 semi-auto. Due to the larger mag, its rate of fire appears to be higher, but it still firing once every 2 to 3 seconds. Ill tell you what, at under 50 yards, that 15 round mag would be gone in about 5 seconds. Again, the game appears to use the same rate of fire for both weapons. So if the Garand is firing too slow, the Carbine is firing *way* too slow.

I assume that you would find the G43 to be in the same boat - that ones hard to test though because its not around all that often.

So my question for consideration:

Are semi-auto's firing way too slow at close ranges? One shot every 2 to 3 seconds at 15m?

Watch your troops next time they fire up close and personal and start counting Mississippi's - unless they are heavily suppressed, its one shot every 2 to 3 seconds. Im not saying CM:BN is broken and the world is at an end! I am saying that semi-autos need to putting that lead out at close ranges. CM:BN is *extremely* polished - more so than any game I have played before right at release. But this is one aspect that I feel needs to be revisited.

Your thoughts?

Thanks

Chad

Apologies in advance - will be away from internet for a week, so not to open a can of worms and then run, but . . .

[Oddball_E8]

Yeah, i had the feeling that garands were firing way too slow, especially at shorter ranges.

but im just a novice when it comes to that venerable weapon so i thought nothing of it...

[Magpie_Oz]

We have kinda talked about this before but it comes down to volume of fire v accurate fire. 40 to 50 rounds for a Garand is what I have seen too. Can't imagine you would hit anything at that rate. 2 to 3 seconds is standard engagement time for aimed shots.

Having said that research shows troops rarely hit anything with rifles anyway so volume of fire became more important.

Not sure what BFC have modelled their game on.

[stikkypixie]

Wrong thread.

[Chad Harrison]

2 to 3 seconds is standard engagement time for aimed shots.

Before I leave, yes, I agree that 2 to 3 seconds is average reaction to recognize the target, acquire it, aim, engage time. But once you do so, then its the eight shots in 8 seconds. Thats whats missing.

They acquire the target and shoot once. At 15 yards. One shot. With a Garand? Thats why it feels wrong.

Thanks

Chad

[Magpie_Oz]

Before I leave, yes, I agree that 2 to 3 seconds is average reaction to recognize the target, acquire it, aim, engage time. But once you do so, then its the eight shots in 8 seconds. Thats whats missing.

They acquire the target and shoot once. At 15 yards. One shot. With a Garand? Thats why it feels wrong.

Thanks

Chad

Not the way I was taught to shoot but like I say I have no idea what basis BFC are going off

[Chad Harrison]

Well, sure, a super disciplined shooter will be able to take those 'one shot kill' shots at 15 meters. But when my forward sights are filled with center of mass at 15 yards, I can gurantee that its not going to be 2 to 3 seconds before I fire again.

Just thinking out loud, I would be willing to bet dollars to pesos that:

The code is only setup to allow one shot/burst at a time.

For full auto weapons this works well because you get one burst for each aim, and the burst could get longer the closer you are - such as the MG42 gunners ripping off a 3 second burst at close range! For bolt action it works well because you need to work the bolt after each shot. But . . . for semi-auto, it doesnt work because you dont need all the time for your aim to recover from a long full-auto burst, or to work the bolt.

Again, I am looking for the opinions and thoughts of others - I am not screaming from the rooftops that the game is broke, which is why the thread name itself has a question mark after it. To me, it feels wrong. It feels 1/2 to 1/3 too slow at close ranges.

Thanks

Chad

[slysniper]

I agree with your logic, just wonder how tweekin it in the game would work.

I already find my ammo loads not lasting long with troops that are engaged, so let them waste more ammo. The death factor would happen quicker, but maybe that is why the rate of fire has been set back some, so maybe it is not a accident that the rate of fire is slow compared to the real life situation.

[Magpie_Oz]

Double taps at close range.

[nik mond]

Double taps for the carbine, very little recoil and a faster mechanism. watching youtube demo's of garand rapid shoots, seems the second shot of a double tap would be a miss with the recoil, and the bolt slide is a little slower too.

[LemuelG]

Not seeing it myself, if the shooter is firing at your ideal rate the section will be out of ammo in a matter of minutes. I've had numerous scouts gun down 2-4 Germans solo, and they were sure as heck shooting more than one round every 2-3 seconds, no doubt about it - gun WAI.

[Bimmer]

It would be interesting to see results from troops of different experience levels. When the fighting gets up close and personal, I'd expect the ROF to go up considerably more than this test shows, but I also wonder if more experienced troops would increase their aimed fire under such circumstances, while green troops might be expected to cower more readily in close proximity to the enemy (and thus reduce their rate of fire) or fire wildly (reducing their accuracy). I know there are factors mentioned here that are not included in the testing - I'm just thinking aloud.

[The_Capt]

My thoughts on this (and this is untested btw) is that CMBN is exercising artificial fire control over the squads. You get manual control with "regular" and "light" targetting orders but the game still puts a brake on mad minutes for at least one good reason;

1. There is no ingame Sgt who will grip young Pvts blazing away at what might be nothing.

Fire discipline is very tough to do in RL and having a bunch of very excited teenagers all firing as fast as they can while entertaining and assuming they are in the area of the actual target can be effective it will also us up ammo very quickly.

If CMBN took the muzzle off the M1 your squads would run out of ammo in a few minutes...then what?

I do believe there is room for close range FPF type tweaking but without some sort of "Target Heavy" command the engine as it is picks the middle ground of ammo expenditure versus firepower versus RL abstraction of fire control.

[Guest]

It would be interesting to see results from troops of different experience levels. When the fighting gets up close and personal, I'd expect the ROF to go up considerably more than this test shows, but I also wonder if more experienced troops would increase their aimed fire under such circumstances, while green troops might be expected to cower more readily in close proximity to the enemy (and thus reduce their rate of fire) or fire wildly (reducing their accuracy).

I think you'd find the results *very* interesting. The firing AI is complex and a huge number of variables are factored in.

I've had numerous scouts gun down 2-4 Germans solo, and they were sure as heck shooting more than one round every 2-3 seconds, no doubt about it - gun WAI.

Yep.

[Oddball_E8]

It would be interesting to see results from troops of different experience levels. When the fighting gets up close and personal, I'd expect the ROF to go up considerably more than this test shows, but I also wonder if more experienced troops would increase their aimed fire under such circumstances, while green troops might be expected to cower more readily in close proximity to the enemy (and thus reduce their rate of fire) or fire wildly (reducing their accuracy). I know there are factors mentioned here that are not included in the testing - I'm just thinking aloud.

i did a super simple test (not even repeated ones, just one) with a regular, fit fully supplied US squad attacked a group of germans (2 HQ and 1 squad) through a hole in a hedgerow, and even tho the enemy was really close to them and they recieved enough fire to get slightly supressed, they never fired faster than the 2-3 seconds per shot mentioned above...

they DID however supress the enemy easily simply because they fired faster (on mass) than the germans with their mausers.

it should be mentioned that it was a full US squad with 1 BAR and 1 tommygun and the enemy had no machinegun but a few MP40's

[Michael Emrys]

...having a bunch of very excited teenagers all firing as fast as they can while entertaining...

:confused:

Let me ask you, do your troops serve drinks and hor d'oeuvres when entertaining?

Michael

[YankeeDog]

Initial investigation on my part suggests there may be some difference between Area Firing behavior and firing on actual, spotted targets.

I just re-loaded movie turns from a recent game, and visually timed the interval between shots for soldiers with Garands. I conveniently had a (Regular) rifle squad that, in the space of two turns had the following situations:

1) Sitting in overwatch behind bocage; another team Blasts open the side of a building right in front of them, surprising and exposing two German HMG teams. U.S. Infantry squad takes Germans under fire at range of about 20m, killing all Germans in the space of about 15 seconds. German soldiers are stationary and get off only a few shots before being killed.

2) Squad charges into building above on an Assault order. Once inside, soldiers take Germans fleeing (running) through scattered trees and bushes under fire, at ranges of about 30-50m. The Germans are not returning fire.

As best I could measure, when an individual soldier with a Garand in situation (1) above was firing repeatedly on a single target (i.e., not shifting aim to a new enemy or reloading), interval between shots was under 2 seconds, and the shortest interval I timed was 1.3 seconds. Again, this is against targets at about 20-25m, inside a building interior, though a just-blasted wall, with smoke and dust from the blast partially obscuring sight.

In situation (2), the intervals I measured ranged from 1.7 to 2.9 seconds. Again, this is firing at rapidly moving targets running through trees and bushes, 40-50m away.

I wouldn't call my test very precise or reliable; there was a fair amount of subjective judgment involved on my part (determining who soldiers are shooting at is a little tricky), and timing such short intervals visually with a stopwatch definitely isn't very precise.

Nevertheless, while I didn't see any actual very rapid fire (bursts of 2 shots or more only a few tenths of a second apart, representing the soldier firing the weapon about as fast as he can bring the muzzle back down and pull the trigger), what I've seen does suggest that soldiers with Garands firing on actual targets shoot at a somewhat higher rate of fire than Chad's "shooting at the dirt" Area Fire tests.

This suggests that BFC has built in a certain amount of fire discipline to area fire orders, perhaps as a way of limiting ammo consumption.

Again, it's very hard to test this stuff, Firefights at these ranges tend to be very short, and targets die quickly. Targets also have a tendency to do things like get up and try to flee (as my second situation), and/or try to find cover, either of which could be affecting results. Even at very close range, it would make sense that maintaining proper sight picture and lead on a rapidly moving target would slow down ROF somewhat, and it also makes sense that aiming at a target that is cowering and/or hiding in good cover would also slow down ROF, at least a little bit.

Regards,

YD

[Vergeltungswaffe]

nevermind...

[titanwarrior]

Sounds interesting but for the ranges that you show. The weapons doesn't feel that far off.

1. The basic combat load of the infantry during the time frame.

2. Magazines on hand and loaded- if not the time it takes too slide rounds back into the M1 magazine.

3. I don't know about the M1 carbine or the or the KAR98. Never tested but I did train on the M1 Garand in the US Army and the firing rates seem about right-for the ranges shown.

4. Today the Army trains on multiple targets 50-300meters out- during the WW2 time frame in basic the soldier was trained with 40 rounds maggies drawers(large square target-with spotters scoring). Very little ranged targeting.

I am sorry but your points on 1,2 and 3 I would have to disagree with concering the M1 Garand.

5. Last but not least your not going to pump up your fire rate unless your into -final protective fires(sustained to cyclic rate of fires).

[Guest]

Can different rates of fire, based on range to target, even be coded? That, imho, is the question.

The answer to that question is "absolutely, yes".

If not, then BFC probably settled on an average rate of fire to cover *most* situations.

Meaning this is definitely not the case. As I mentioned above there are many, many factors that go into determining how many rounds a soldier in CMBN puts downrange.

[Guest]

Yes, soldiers firing at actual targets will probably fire more quickly, again depending on way too many factors to list, than soldiers not firing at anything in particular.

[PLM2]

Training and reality are kind of 2 different things. The excitement of actually getting a target acquired at 25-50 meters kind of negates the fact that you would wanna put precisely one bullet in it on the range to conserve ammo for other targets.

It does seem painfully slow sometimes if you watch individual shooters with an enemy fully exposed at close range. I can't imagine myself doing that, especially with the excitement and adrenaline. Whether you know you can shoot that well that fast or not, you're probably gonna bank on you can if its a life or death situation, I certainly would especially if he's shooting at me. It's kind of hard to notice all that in the scope of the game though because it works both ways.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Thanks, Phil. Didn't realize there was a page 2 when I posted that. *smacks self*

[Vark]

If you watch combat footage from WII (not staged) GI's seem to be firing at all the above suggested rates, sometimes a single squads ROF is a mixture of all the above. Given soldiers have to individually spot and engage is their ROF varied?

[YankeeDog]

If you watch combat footage from WII (not staged) GI's seem to be firing at all the above suggested rates, sometimes a single squads ROF is a mixture of all the above. Given soldiers have to individually spot and engage is their ROF varied?

Based on what I observed in the "in vivo" tests things were quite varied; some soldiers fired much more frequently and rapidly than others.

I suspect this is probably related to relatively small random variances in things like who spots a target first, and/or who has a slightly better LOF to a target, creating larger variances in outcome. For example, if one soldier (for whatever reason) get a shot off at a target slightly ahead of another, this may cause the target to go to ground, and the second soldier may not shoot at all. So a small random difference in spotting behavior creates a larger difference in ROF behavior.